“From the Northern Lights of Alberta to Hollywood is a long journey. The pieces of knowledge and wisdom gathered along the way were the treasures.”

From the age of four-years-old, I would spend time in the forest accompanied by my dog Buff, a big wolf hybrid. I grew up in an old fashioned world, where the old adage “men were men,” ruled the day. Bravery was measured by the degree of danger a man would put himself into and make it out alive. … “It was a different world back then. They gave me a .22 caliber pellet gun for my fourth birthday! I’ve got a five-year-old boy and I have a hard time letting him use a table knife!”

I credit my early connection with my dog to opening my eyes to communicating with animals…“I remember the first prairie chicken I ever got -remember it was for food, we needed it. It was at a time of year that the chickens were eating the fermenting berries and they were drunk, I practically touched the bird with the gun. When I pulled the trigger the bird fell to the ground and my dog, all 100 plus pounds jumped on it…Well that was my “first kill”, my passage into manhood, I wasn’t going to let a dog get it! I remember my primal urge taking over and I charged the dog, all forty pounds of me. He gave it to me, but to this day I don’t know how I got away with it… my proud mother cooked the chicken for supper – teeth marks and all. ”

Horses played an even bigger part in my education.

I can’t remember learning how to ride. I remember being alone, falling off a horse and being too far from home to walk, and too little to get back on by myself. I remember many frustrating attempts later; with the help of a nearby fence post, I managed to jump back on the horse’s back.

At the age of twelve, I was given my first colt – Slasher. It was at this time that my formal education in animal communication began.

I had seen colts halter broken before. The horse dragged to submission, full of fear, exhausted and sweating.

The morning my Grandpa took me to the pasture I learned a different way of relating to horses. In today’s language, I was introduced to “Horse Whispering”. Within ten minutes of entering the pasture, my colt was following the old man around like a puppy. When Grandpa stopped walking the colt would walk up behind him until he touched the old man’s arm – then it would stand waiting for the human to scratch his nose and play with his ears. The only “fear” the colt experienced was the initial “flight” response to the “snake-like” rope, when he was captured in the middle of the 40-acre pasture, amongst the 10 or 15 other horses in the herd.

The lessons my Grandfather taught me agreed with my natural sense of right and wrong. I remember crying when the calves were jerked off their feet during the rodeos my family attended when I was a young boy – and being teased for the tears. To this day, I will not watch the calf-roping event

The years passed and the colt grew, the relationship flowered between Slasher and I. The colt would break from the herd when I whistled. As a trouble-making-teen, I would delight in scaring my friends from town, by standing with them in the middle of the pasture and having Slasher come charging at a full gallop toward them, sliding to a stop at the last minute and tucking his nose under my arm.

My Grandfather’s lessons paid off, and by the time, I was 16 years old, customers were hauling horses up to 400 miles to have me train for them.

Years later, Slasher and I were helping a film crew move gear up a mountain when I was approached by a man who had been watching me: “I like how you are with your animals. Would you like to come and try working mine?” he asked.

The man was Gerry Therrien. For the next decade, I worked with a multitude of indigenous and exotic wild animals, making television shows and feature films. Unlike the old image of a circus lion tamer, we would work with all the animals hands-on, no whips or chairs for protection, just common sense and understanding to guide and protect ourselves and the actors working in the scenes.

In 1990 I began teaching pet owners the “art” of communicating. My first clinic was held near Jasper, Alberta in 1991.

I married Barbara in ’91. We have four children and live in Cobble Hill, B.C. on Vancouver Island (Canada’s Hawaii!). Our oldest daughters “grew-up” so fast, that when our twins were born in ’97 we decided that Movies could wait (I would be gone on-location for up to 3 months at a time). I took a job with the BCSPCA as a field officer.

My sense of right and wrong still serving me, I have questioned the results of my “obedience” classes and those of other trainers. Eventually, I realized that the progressions I use training animals, need to be used on the humans themselves to speed and enrich their learning.

Working with the homeless animals at the SPCA, I have had the opportunity to further hone my skills at “reading” domestic canines, and helping rehabilitate many of the dogs that would otherwise have been euthanised as “unpredictable” – most notably “Scarlet” a Rottweiler seized in a precedent setting case in Victoria, B.C.

Scarlet had bitten her owner, a police officer, a postal worker and others. She had no communications skills whatsoever – within two months of coming to my house she went into a foster home and commenced her job as a “greeter” in a pet store.

I do not believe in using “gimmicks” to train dogs. My approach is as straight forward and honest as the animals I work with. Choke collars are not welcome at any of my functions. If I had to describe what I do in a single word it would be “Holistic.”